The Importance Of Writing Badly Analysis

By examining the argument titled The Importance of Writing Badly by Bruce Ballenger in the book 21 Genres there is evidence of each rhetorical feature as he discusses the methods of writing that created the best outcomes. Ballenger uses Ethos, Pathos, and Logos to prove the effectiveness of his argument about the way we are taught to write within our educational system. Ballenger begins by talking about his experiences as a young writer in grade school. He was ridiculed for writing badly, particularly for making his essays “awkward” according to his teacher, Mrs. O’Neill. He often felt under pressure to write the perfect sentence with the perfect words and phrases making his writing unsuccessful in his teachers eyes. Now as a teacher himself he finds his students struggling to put words on paper and express themselves. He blames the educational system for his students inability to write with their own style and voice. Ballenger stresses the ability to write is more about the topic and the student’s interest in the essay than the grammar and structure of the essays. He finds that other professors view their students essays as badly written with sloppy writing, yet Ballenger focuses on the writing that his students do well. He points out that

He compares driving to the way students write in the end of his writing. He says, “it is more important to allow students to first experience how language can be a vehicle for discovering how they see the world. And what matters in the journey--at least initially--is not what kind of car you’re driving, but where you end up” (21 Genres). He uses this reason to support his claim that letting students first write what is on the tip of his or her tongue and simply getting the words onto paper let the writer say what they mean without the pressure to write an acclaimed novel their first time